Abolition

Demonstrating the Popular Will--Abolition Victories in Two Massachusetts Towns

On November 2, election day in Massachusetts, extraordinary--but ultimately very simple--things happened in two small cities. By margins of three to one and nine to one, respectively, voters in Cambridge and Newton called on the US government to negotiate a time-bound, verifiable, and enforceable Nuclear Weapons Convention to abolish all nuclear weapons. These votes send a powerful message to our Congressional representatives and can serve as an organizing model for others.

These votes reflect the broad desire of US people for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The government's nuclear arsenal, repeated nuclear threats, and first strike policy clearly do not reflect the US people's will.

An equally important lesson from this success is the reminder that it is essential for organizers to create opportunities for concerned citizens to express their commitments and visions. Both referenda have roots in the town meeting votes and ballot initiatives of the 1980s' Nuclear Weapons Freeze movement. People continue to understand the dangers of nuclear war, especially after Congress's refusal to ratify the CTBT. More immediately, our votes grew from the 1997 New England Nuclear Weapons Abolition Organizing Conference organized by AFSC and were encouraged by several Vermont town meeting victories.

Cambridge and Newton are each home to about 100,000 people and traditionally vote Democratic. Cambridge is a diverse, multi-class, and multi-racial community. Missile guidance systems are designed at Draper Laboratories. Home to Harvard University, MIT, think tanks, book stores, and high-tech companies, Cambridge sees itself as the intellectual capital of the US. Newton is a mostly white and prosperous Boston suburb known for its good public schools.

The 1997 Abolition Organizing Conference differed from other peace conferences by concentrating on the importance of organizing. We held up the model of the 1980s town meeting and state-wide votes to halt the arms race, and we honored inspiring organizers and their achievements. We weren't subtle about our message: Good ideas don't become national policy because they're good. You have to organize and build popular power from below to change fundamental state policies.

That message drew abolitionists in Vermont back to their town meetings, resulting in 33 Vermont town meetings voting for abolition earlier this year. In Cambridge, Peace Action members took the conference's message and its Vermont reverberations to heart. They approached the City Council and won approval to place the question on the ballot. Perhaps a strategy that placed the question on the ballot after gaining the requisite number of voter signatures would have been better for the long run, requiring local activists to engage more deeply with the community. But their approach got the job done. In Newton, organizers knew that a number of city councils across the US had endorsed Abolition 2000's call for a treaty, but they understood the value of taking the question to voters, rather than simply having a few elected officials exercise their political power.

In both communities, opportunities were lost because of a minimum of door-to-door organizing. Instead, abolition supporters placed articles and letters in local newspapers, and news that the questions were on the ballot spread by word of mouth. The August visit of Japanese and American A-bomb victims to Cambridge certainly helped to keep memory and passions alive. The paucity of focused organizing made some people nervous, and limited our ability to build organizationally for the longer term. Yet the spontaneity of people simply voting their beliefs and hopes underlines what the polls have been telling us for years: US people want nuclear weapons abolished.

We face two immediate tasks: The first is to arrange meetings with Congressional representatives to press them to take political courage from the referenda. Second, since we know that only a national grassroots movement can change US policy, we must work to get the word out to others so they can take encouragement from, and build on, our model and victories.